Poetry

Poetry Like Bread: Poets of the Political Imagination

Martin Espada, an award-winning poet, teaches in the English department at UMass Amherst. "Poetry Like Bread" is reprinted from his book of critical essays, Zapata's Disciple (South End Press, 1998).

In his landmark essay, "In Defense of the Word," Eduardo Galeano writes; "We are what we do, especially what we do to change what we are...A literature born in the process of crisis and change, and deeply immersed in the risks and events of its time, can indeed help to create the symbols of the new reality, and perhaps--if talent and courage are not lacking--throw light on the signs along the road...To claim that literature on its own is going to change reality would be an act of madness or arrogance. It seems to me no less foolish to deny that it can aid in making this change."

This essay will focus on the political imagination of certain contemporary American poets published by Curbstone Press of Willimantic, Connecticut. These poets are "American" not in the conventional sense of the US alone, but in the sense of "América" with an accent. Poets from New York, yes, but also Tegucigalpa. In this meeting of North and South we find a striking commonality of purpose and tactic, a solidarity born of the fact that one's own quiet labor in the dark is the shadow of the same act committed by others in the same clandestine dark thousands of miles away.

Poetry of the political imagination is a matter of both vision and language. Any progressive social change must be imagined first, and that vision must find its most eloquet possible expression to move from vision to reality. Any oppressive social condition, before it can change, must be named and condemned in words that persuade by stirring the emotions, awakening the senses. Thus the need for the political imagination.

Political imagination goes beyond protest to articulate an artistry of dissent. The question is not whether poetry and politics can mix. That question is a luxury for those who can afford it. The question is how best to combine poetry and politics, craft and commitment, how to find the artistic imagination equal to the intensity of the experience and the quality of the ideas.

There is a great poetic tradition of the political imagination in the Americas, embodied by Walt Whitman in the North and Pablo Neruda in the South. In his 1855 introduction to Leaves of Grass, Whitman indicates that the duty of the poet is "to cheer up slaves and horrify despots." In Neruda we encounter Whitman's most eloquent descendant. Radicalized by the Spanish Civil War, he articulates his metamorphosis in "I Explain a Few Things": "You will ask: why does your poetry / not speak to us of sleep, of the leaves, / of the great volcanoes of your native land? / Come and see the blood in the streets, / come and see / the blood in the streets, / come and see the blood / in the streets!"

The language produced by this political imagination is often clear, concrete, urgently direct. Though sometimes written to be read aloud, these are not campaign speeches. The appeal to the senses, the image, is still there: What better way to describe the haze in a polluted sky than Jack Hirschman's "tortillas of smog"? Indeed, poets of the political imagination often have the art of metaphor, of finding the face which is many faces, of finding the moment which stands for a century. Ernesto Cardenal's captured--and liberated--parrots become rebellious guerrillas in Nicaragua; Roque Dalton's torture victim looks up at the "perfect" glass eye of his torturer, made in the United States, and sees the physical manifestation of US foreign policy in El Salvador.

Though some political works are solely works of the imagination, many, if not most, are drawn directly from lived experience, contradicting a certain critical notion that political poems are written after a morning reading the newspaper, as the poet searches for a headline which will be sufficiently infuriating to inspire a burst of rhetoric. Many, if not most, political poets are personally familiar with the rhythms of oppression. The reader only has to encounter the startling prison poems of Jimmy Santiago Baca to appreciate that particular music. A social horror is focused through the prism of the poet's understanding, and the reader unfamiliar with the experience finds his or her own imagination engaged and politicized. Or the experience may prove surprisingly familiar: Virtually anyone who reads Baca's "I Applied for the Board," about the denial of parole, can identify with the trajectory of anticipation and disappointment sketched in the poem.

More than mere victims, however, poets of the political imagination are activists, political participants. Jack Hirschman and Sara Menefee fight for the rights of the homeless in San Francisco. Kevin Bowen is the head of an agency which serves Vietnam veterans and works towards a reconciliation with Vietnam. Luis Rodriguez works with peacemakers among gangs in Los Angeles and elsewhere. Victor Montejo, from exile, speaks out publicly against the suffering of his own Mayan people in Guatemala. In Latin America, a number of contemporary poets have engaged in the deeply political act of armed insurrection, including Roque Dalton, Otto René Castillo, Leonel Rugama, and Daisy Zamora.

Three of these four poets--Dalton, Castillo, and Rugama--were murdered for political reasons; most grotesquely of all, Castillo was burned alive by the Guatemalan military in 1967. Throughout the Americas, contemporary poets of the political imagination have been incarcerated, some for days, others for many years (including, of the poets mentioned above, Dalton, Castillo, Montejo, Hirschman, Menefee, and Rodriguez). Many more have been forced into political exile. Some have suffered unique forms of political persecution, as with the US government's attempts to deport Margaret Randall.

Not surprisingly, resistance is a major theme of the political imagination. The poets are careful to insist upon the kind of intimate details that give politics a human face. Thus Jimmy Santiago Baca reports to us, from the midst of a prison rebellion, of men singing, "in the smoke and bars in their cells, they sing!" As a combantant in the Sandinista revolution, Daisy Zamora vividly recalls a friend making his way across a battlefield through "sporadic bursts of gunfire," as she and others watched, "our hearts beating uselessly." While some poets speak openly of political insurgency, others focus on the personal revolution of thought and language, which in turn become liberating forces. So Clemente Soto Vélez, another poet imprisoned for sedition, writes of "the thinking peon," the "peon of the subversive verb." As this vocabulary makes clear, the poets rightly regard their verbs as subversive, each poem as a political act in itself.

The same poets are committed advocates, speaking for the voices struck silent, living or dead. The poets tell us of being haunted by this song of the voiceless. In "Nocturnal Visits," Claribel Alegria speaks of "the amuptated / the cripples / those who lost both legs / both eyes / the stammering teenagers. / At night I listen to their phantoms / shouting in my ear." In "Then Comes a Day," Luis Rodriguez visits a barrio cemetery filled with his dead friends and writes; "I have carried the obligation to these names. / I have honored their voices / still reverberating through me." Gioconda Belli remembers Nicaragua's dead in "The Blood of Others" and "In Memoriam." Indeed, these are poets who pay tribute to their dead, so many dead, from the internationally known, such as Victor Jara, the singer and guitarist slain by the military in the Chilean coup, to the anonymous, who would dissolve into oblivion without the poets.

Both Whitman and Neruda expressly embraced the role of the poet as advocate, and in so doing influenced generations of poets. Whitman, in #24 of "Song of Myself,' proclaims: "through me many long dumb voices, / voices of the interminable generations of prisoners and slaves, / voices of the diseas'd and despairing and of thieves and dwarfs ... voices veiled and I remove the veil." Neruda, standing at The Heights of Macchu Piccu speaking to centuries of dead laborers, says in Canto 12, "Look at me from the depths of the earth, / tiller of fields, weaver, reticent shepherd ... jeweler with crushed fingers, / farmer anxious among his seedlings, / potter wasted among his clays ... I come to speak for your dead mouths." The poet's advocacy springs from compassion, and compassion is the poet's pulse. Whitman again: "whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to / his own funeral drest in his shroud."

The poems of the political imagination document daily existence as well, finding the political in the everday. There is, for example, invaluable documentation of working-class lives and the struggle to transcend dehumanizing labor. Leo Connellan movingly writes of Amelia, a woman of the canneries in Maine. Kevin Bowen brings us the "Gelatin Factory," and Luis Rodriguez "The B last Furnace." Cheryl Savageau tells of dangerous work with silicon, pesticides, and asbestos. There is unemployment too, as in Savageau's "Department of Labor Haiku": "In the winter snow / the kitchens fill up with steam / and men out of work."

They also document the presence of such social forces as racism and sexism, and in so doing make those abstract terms painfully concrete. Tino Villanueva constructs the personification of anti-Mexican bigotry in his portrayal of Sarge, a character from the movie Giant who enforces, with his "thick arms," the rules of segregation in a Texas diner. The major Puerto Rican poet Julia de Burgos, before her early death, anticipated the rise of feminism with "To Julia de Burgos," a condemnation of suffocating social convention: "who governs in me is me."

These poems not only condemn, but appreciate. Claribel Alegria appreciates Carmen Bomba, "porter ... human beast of burden" and "poet." Jimmy Santiago Baca, as one who has known brutal incarceration, can proclaim, "Ah Rain!" and mean it, passionately, politically. Jack Hirschman pauses at a political rally to observe a butterfly walking across a newspaper in "This Neruda Earth."

In fact, perhaps the most remarkable characteristic found in the poetry of the political imagination is the quality of hopefulness, testimony to the extraordinary resilience of that human quality. The prophetic voice resonates throughout the poetry; the poets sing of the possibility, the certainty of eventual justice. Alegria, a poet "condemned so many times / to be a crow," is able to fly, "and amid valleys / volcanoes / and debris of war / I catch sight of the promised land." Soto Vélez, also a poet of the "promised land," predicts that "the hands / of the peon will thunder in the cartilage of the future." Alfonso Quijada Uriás of El Salvador envisions a time when the grocer will use the poet's writings as paper funnels "to wrap up his sugar and coffee / for the people of the future / who now for obvious reasons / cannot savor his sugar nor his coffee." Most poignantly, the murdered Castillo writes that it is "splendid / to know yourself victorious / when all around you / it's all still so cold, / so dark."

This is the height of political imagination, in the sense of the poet as visionary, again echoing Neruda and Whitman. Neruda could peer back into history and foresee contemporary resistance movements in Mexico and Peru with his poems for Emilano Zapata and Tupac Amarú--movements, in fact, which would adopt the very names of these revolutionaries. Whitman could gaze upon the slave at auction and see "the father of those who shall be fathers in their turns. / In him the start of populous states and rich republics. / Of him countless immortal lives with countless embodiments and enjoyments."

What else but defiant, extravagant hope--political imagination--could motivate Roque Dalton, a man who suffered imprisonment and ultimately assassination, to write: "I believe the world is beautiful / and that poetry, like bread, is for everyone."

Sonia Sanchez

Sonia Sanchez:
This sister, as an African
griot, has yelled into hell,
and made the devil listen,
she has hollered to the
heavens, and made sinners
take to the mat, to Jesus,
to Jehovah. I mean she has
whispered to the wind and
caused hurricanes to appear.

She writes a poem that
screams in anger, but rests
on a mellow-tone, causing
brothers to move from
hallucinating head itch to
build nations in their minds.
This Sister is a literary
Malcolm, she is the Gravy's
whirl-wind. On the moun-
tain top she is the true
vision of the King.

Sister Sonia is a soft loud
voice that wields a comfort
to all Black men. She is a
friend to all Black women, a
mother to all Black children,
she is Teacher, Griot-Queen,
Warrior in step with Nzinga,
moving to the position of
Queen Mother sitting on the
throne of righteousness con-
ferring with the ancestors on
spirits gone by, and those to
come.

She is the voice from my
soul, she is the drum beat
in a dead head that comes
alive like a JuJu Priest, and
touches sisters with harmonic-
love. Sister Sonia Sanchez,
no matter which way you turn
her, she be baaaaD!!!

Sonia Sanchez:
I read the lines within
her face, harmonic
rhythms dancing off
the eyes, rounding the
ears, bouncing off the
nose and caressing the
lips, telling the stories
of love, loneliness, joy
and pain, telling the
story of how I was a
mother with/
without him,
how he loved me,
how I loved him,
how he left me, and
how I left him.

I read the lines coming
up from the soul that
screams of slavery,
rape and murder, and
love. I can read tender-
ness tingling at the
nape of her neck,
soothing yesterday's
whiplash.

She be Poet,
within-without...
       Sayif/99

Photo © Dr. Reginald L. Jackson, 1999

Text, Sayif M. Sanyika

The Institute Press-Boston, Publisher of The Real McCoy, Pages From History, 617/469-0900

While the Light Still Trembles
Richard Cambridge is co-founding member of the performance troupe "Singing with the Enemy" whose dramatic work ¡EMBARGO! shows the devastating effects of the US economic blockade of Cuba. The troupe performed in Havana last July at the First Cuba-US Friendship Conference.

George Capaccio is a remarkable soul. His collection of poems and stories, While the Light Still Trembles, comes forth from the crucible of action: in defiance of US law, George has obeyed the higher law of conscience and traveled to Iraq, not once, but five times, to deliver humanitarian aid, and bear witness to the brutality of US sanctions which have become, in his words, "an act of genocide that have directly caused the deaths of at least one million innocent people, mostly children."

These poems are brutal, the pages bleed. I was astonished by how many surprised me. Ambushed is a better word. These poems prod, poke, sting to life the benumbed American conscience. George steps inside the masters of war and lets them spew forth their insanity, twisted humor, and perverse machismo in unedited soul-to-tongue narratives.

In "Demolition Derby," the American penchant for sex and violence--"the rigs rutting up the gravel pit./Like bull elk at mating time smashing skulls in tests of strength"--is spliced with "flyboys in high-tech mothers of death/strafe troops and civilians/like fish in a barrel/a charred and bloody silence."

The horrific side of serendipity is revealed in "The Sound of Freedom," a double narrative of a US general getting psyched for killing listening to a Pucchini aria, and a mother and child going to the market. You know instinctively the inevitable end... "His voice so like water/is silent now. Her own gushes from her throat/with nowhere to flow/but into the hollow/bowl of a scream."

This collection has been crafted in a most unique way: the discipline and techniques of the stage alchemized to the page. These poems do what virtual reality pretends to do: put you inside the mother, the child, the general, the bomb. George fulfills the ancient calling of bard. We experience a catharsis, a change of heart; we are empowered.

In "Great Balls of Fire," a narrative of a movie set in downtown Boston, a van explodes hurling mannequins to the sky and the crowd cheers. The poet is shocked, but then... "Fuck it. I might as well join the fun./ Hooray for the burning van." But now the celluloid in the reader's mind's eye is spliced into reality: "Three cheers for chef Reno's Texas-style barbecue (Waco) with justice on a spit/a big standing O for the roasting of Baghdad by Bush and Clinton... /Hell, let's hear it for Hiroshima and all the blasts to come..../Bombs Away."

In "Silence," the poet feels "like an abolitionist.../denouncing slavery to good and decent folks/who think it perfectly reasonable/to cripple an entire people." In "Madeline: A Meditation" the Secretary of State is invited to "a hospital in Baghgad

where the logic of sanctions/trembles like water into wine." In "I Didn't Look Away" a catalogue of despair, "I saw ambulances on cinder blocks/rotting in a parking lot."

Then there is the masterpiece, "Torment," where the poet makes you believe there's a room in the capitol where JFK is preserved. where you can actually visit him. It turns into a grotesque freak show as Kennedy's head explodes at regular intervals, bringing him back to life to repent to God for all the suffering he caused in His name. It was the most shocking poem I have ever read. I thought, Can this be so? Is there such a room? I tried an experiment. I read it recently at a poetry venue in Cambridge. People came up to me and actually said, "Is there really such a room?"

In the end the only remedy against despair is in the bond of enlightened community involved in direct action. In "Peace," marching with Quakers, "I lift my sign like a lantern/and feel the light of camaraderie/falling from the faces of these Friends./I know as they know/there's work to be done,/stones to be moved/fields to be cleared,/a peace to be grown by every one."

This work won the prestigious "PeaceWriting Award" sponsored by the University of Arkansas for "a book of poetry that significantly contributes to peacemaking." Unfortunately, the award did not include the means of publishing the volume. I said to myself I wouldn't do this, but I feel compelled. Publishers take note: This book will sell! George is a working poet, and if there is one thing I know, books sell at readings. Until then, you can contact George for a copy at salaamg@aol.com.

She Had Some Horses and In Mad Love and War
Betty Zisk, a Quaker, teaches political science at Boston University.

I came to love Joy Harjo's poetry--She had Some Horses (NY: Thunder's Mouth Press, 1983); In Mad Love and War (Hanover, NY: Wesleyan University Press, 1990)--and even dared to read it to my students in a class on political communication, knowing almost nothing about her. I mention this point to stress the transparency of most of her imagery--the Native American in the reservation school, too tired to learn ("I can see the stagger / in your eyes / glasses askew / your voice loud / cawing / uncertain bravado / and you come in here / to be taught / to take writing / but hell, / what can I teach you / what can I do?"). In other poems, such as "Ice Horses" we must work harder: "These are the ones who escape / after the last hope is turned inward; / they are the most dangerous ones. / These are the hottest ones, / but so cold that your tongue sticks / and is torn apart because it is / frozen to the motion of hooves."

Harjo's heritage is that of the Creeks, forcibly removed from Georgia to Oklahoma in the 1830s. Trained (like so many of today's freshest voices) in the University of Iowa's creative writing program, Harjo draws on the myths of her people or writes in a more literal genre to offer both anger and hope. In "Autobiography," for example, though she begins with her bleak heritage ("We lived next door to the bootlegger, and were lucky. The bootlegger reigned. / We were a stolen people in a stolen land. Oklahoma meant defeat."), she concludes with the image of the hummingbird ("She was a shining piece of invisible memory, / inside the raw cortex of songs. I knew then this was the Muscogee season of / forgiveness, time of new corn, the spiraling dance.").

The myth, the poetic story that Harjo brings to us--a mix of anger, joy, and resignation--is an urgent one because the pain, the injustice, and the spiritual imbalance in the lives of her people is not just a matter of the past. In "Deer Dancer," which pictures a young, drunken woman, dancing naked in a bar, she tells the story for the sake of the future--"for the baby inside the girl sealed up with a lick of hope.... / The way back is deer breath on icy windows.").